Talent Talk

‘If you take a chance based on the best information available and you get it right, you get a small reward.

‘If you take a chance based on the best information you have and you get it wrong, you get a medium-sized punishment. ‘If you take no chance, and just go along with the boss or go along with the majority, you get a small reward. So what would you do?’

Intrigued, as ever, in the goings on in the world of the arts, this latest skyscraper design signals a break from the past on a grand level.

This recent article by the folks over at Harvard has really touched a nerve. Asking why managers don’t think more deeply, the article partly reviews the Zaltmans’ new book on the subject, Marketing Metaphoria. At the time of writing, the article had generated a remarkable 134 responses.

So why the ballyhoo over such a seemingly mundane topic about how deeply we think at work?

There seems to be no obvious explanation. Judging from the responses, a number of people feel quite passionate on the subject and hold management, organisations, and the whole professional landscape squarely responsible for the malaise of ’shallow thinking’.

Happiness is back in vogue.

It has taken some time to happen, two and a half millennia in fact, but the pursuit the Ancient Greek philosophers said was central to human existence had been largely forgotten among the ranks of academia and the general public alike - until recently.

Bestselling books by Tal Ben-Shahar and Martin Seligman have put Happiness firmly back on the agenda. A BBC series late last year on the subject was also a big hit among viewers. Self-help books have for a long time been telling us about ‘The ten best ways to…’ but this is different. The movement taking place now is deeper, and includes top academics who, pointing to research, tell us that the conscious pursuit of Happiness really can change our lives for the better.

TT

It is now seven years since Jim Collins penned the results of his research into what causes mediocre companies to make the leap from Good to Great.

Taking over five years to complete, the research project is perhaps one of the most far-reaching ever conducted in business.

The conclusions we believe can also be used by people in their careers, including the Hedgehog Concept, and the Flywheel Effect.

A book that recently landed on my doormat asks whether foreign-owned firms have a competitive advantage over local ones in the global marketplace.

Are geniuses born or made?

Made, says the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Performance emphatically.

A good summary of the arguments can be found in this New Scientist article (’How to be a genius’) which argues that anyone can be a genius, so long as certain key factors are in place.

Those factors are: